It takes a few minutes for my tankless water heater to warm up, so we end up wasting a lot of water in our shower. Is there a way to avoid this? A friend mentioned a “comfort valve” or something? What is it and how does it work? Or is there another solution? Thx!
I know it feels wasteful, but it's a couple of pennies worth of water.
A couple of tricks I've seen in the zero waste forums is saving that water in a bucket and watering plants or flushing toilets with it.
I actually did this when I got my tankless. It saved like 6 units of water which was like 600 gallons over the 3 months but I was only like $17 off my bill.
$17 over 3 months isn't worth the work imo but if you're on a water budget or if it costs a lot in your area ymmv.
600 gallons for 17 dollars? That's very high to me. We pay about 1€ per 1000L, so 600 gallons would cost about 2,20 euros.
America has a lot of desert and water starved areas, so there are higher costs in parts of the states.